Professional Left Podcast Episode 1004: The MAGA Merry-Go-Round

“Never give a sucker an even break.”  -- William Claude Dukenfield

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The Bush-Off Machine Never Stops Running

In case you are unfamiliar with the Fabulous, Tea-Baggulous Bush-Off Machine, here's the link.  

In a few weeks, that link will be 14 years old.  

That's five years before Trump oozed down the escalator.

Back then, every single Never Trumper you know was just a bog-standard Republican douchebag, willing to swear on the bones of St. Ronald Reagan that Barack Obama was very likely a Kenyan communist usurper hell-bent on killing your sainted white grandma with something called a "Death Panel", that Democrats were spendthrift wastrels, that the GOP  was 100% problem-free and superawesome, and that any dirty hippie who suggested otherwise was a terrorist-loving, Murrica-hating degenerate.

Now, 14 years later, all those recently-former Republican Never Trumpers are very invested in making sure nobody talks about nuthin' that was going on in politics before 2016.

And the Bush-Off Machine?

    It's still going like 60.  Like it just rolled of the showroom floor..

Performing exactly as it was designed perform.

Which is why we...

Burn The Lifeboats

How Conservatives Win

Reposted from five years ago because these people never, ever learn.

You hate Liberals, right?



Well, do you know what would make those
damn Liberals really crazy?



Picking up that gun.




And then putting it in your mouth.











And then pulling the trigger.












Oh yes.
Absolutely.




Liberals will hate that
more than anything ever!



Or maybe you don't really hate Liberals?



Maybe you secretly love them!




Maybe you secretly want to have
gay Muslim sex with them!!


























You hate Liberals, right?

Each year in America, there is a sucker Conservative voter born every minute.

Please give generously to help us find a cure.

Professional Left Podcast #264

Introduced once again by Kevin's sweet promo video, which you should definitely spam everywhere.

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime."

-- Ernest Hemingway

Links:

• Solyndra program nets taxpayers five billion dollars.
• Washingtonian Magazine and Daily Beast on why David Gregory lost his job
• Via Gawker, the most excellent Ta-Nahisi Coates Twitter stream.
• Some examples of both sides don’t from Driftglass in 2006.

Da' money goes here:

Science Fiction University Questions (No Googlesies):

1.  In which science fiction short story is Santa Claus really a James Bond-like secret agent?  Who was the author of the story and what was the name of at least one villain from the story. (Bonus point for knowing the greeting between employees of Santa's workshop)

2.  What 1964 Christmas SF movie disaster is always a fan favorite at conventions.  [Hint:  Pia Zedora]

3.  What dystopian science fiction movie is conspicuously set in the lead up to Christmas?

4.  In a Ray Bradbury short story, a young boy's parents are worried that travel regulations will make their son's Christmas suck.  But the young boy gets a most unexpected Christmas present.  What is the name of the story and what present does the boy receive?

5.  In an Arthur C. Clarke short story, a Jesuit priest's faith is sorely tested by a tragic discovery.  What is the name of the story and what does the priest discover?

6.  Had the internet existed in 1978 when this successful film franchise spawned one of the most universally hated holiday specials of all time, it might have doomed the career of Bea Arthur among others.  What was the film franchise and what was the name of the fictional holiday the awful, awful show purported to celebrate?

7.  What famous writer of science fiction (including the rarely seen "A Carol for Another Christmas") was born on Christmas Day?

8.  What science fiction movie is centered around the need to protect the miraculous pregnancy of an unwed mother from a violent world.

9.  In what tv series do Desmond and Penny finally connect via telephone on Christmas Eve?

10.  What author contracted with Scribner's for 12 years to produce a new "juvenile" novel each year for the Christmas season?   

Mittens Disposes of Yet Another

Politically inconvenient persona.

From Charles P. Pierce:

...

Willard Romney, staunch opponent of the big Wall Street banks. 

Jesus wept, but that's hilarious. 

The fact is that the president is a cool and rational man and he is facing someone who is running as a caricature not only of himself, but of the several other selves he's found it convenient to construct for himself along the way. It is possible that a cool and rational man is incapable of confronting someone this ridiculous on the simple grounds of how ridiculous that someone actually has become. How to do it may not be within the cool and rational man's comprehension. But what happened on Wednesday night — and, more to the point, what the president allowed to happen on Wednesday night — has changed this entire election. It has given the Beltway press the horse race of their dreams, which is going to matter a lot over the next couple of weeks. Moreover, it may have buried progressive government forever by demonstrating how tight the boundaries really are around what is considered acceptable economic solutions to a battered national economy.

...

Unless one is very careful, that Romneyflouric Acid will eat through everything.

The Subtraction of the Christ

The Whore on Christmas

Arizona Senator John Kyl shown here announcing a new Republican holiday -- the 15 or 17 or maybe 20 Days of Cadvent -- during which official Republican Christopath dogma now holds that it is somehow a blasphemy against the Prince of Peace and the protector of "the least of these" to take action on behalf of peace, or in aid of the sick and the poor:

To Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's suggestion that the Senate come back the week after Christmas isn't just a way to complete a busy lame duck agenda -- but an attack on people of the Christian faith.

"It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out," Kyl said today, "frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff."

Anyone who is the least bit shocked by this needs to go stand in a corner and count backwards to 1980. Because for the last 30 years the Right has succeeded in stunting and maiming us all ever-closer to a feudal state cage from which we may never emerge by wrapping their deep loathing for America in scripture and triple-dipping it in the Blood of the Lamb.

And so when caught red-handed kicking this this country in the throat yet again, it should surprise no one that the instant, basal reflex from Republican homunculi like Kyl and DeMint would be to defile the life and teachings of Jesus Christ one more time.

As this angry, infuriating year of 2010 stumbles to an end, there is truly no class of American more collectively contemptible than Republican Congressmen.

Except, of course, for the feeble-minded, zombified shitbags who keep voting for them.

I Blame Michelle

Once upon a time, a long time ago...

Me: Good morning.

Her: Did you just call me a bitch?

Me: (sigh) No. I did not just call you a bitch.

Her: Oh, so now you're calling me crazy?!

And now we're off to the races.

Seeking to explain President Obama's planet-sized cognitive blind-spot (namely, WTF is it with this otherwise very smart guy's utterly inexplicable inability to comprehend the plain, simple, direct and unambiguous Words. That. Are. Coming. Out. Of. Republican. Mouths.) I cannot help but notice that the man is very happily married to a very smart, tough-minded and accomplished woman who is clearly his equal

and with whom he is successfully raising a couple of kids in one of the most inherently stressful and high-pressure environments imaginable.

In other words, President Obama's relationship experience seems to all be concentrated in the general area of a mature, adult partnership where each party actually cares about the other, where, when you fight, you fight with the gloves on, and the idea that one of you would willingly tear the whole fucking temple down and nuke the rubble just to win an argument is almost literally inconceivable.

Which is good for him, but bad for us.

Because it means he has no conception of what it is like to be locked into a relationship with someone who wants to destroy you so badly that they are willing to hurt themselves just so they can cause you pain.

Because that's insane.

Has never walked into a room full of flying crockery because IHateYou! IHateYou! IHateYou!

I mean, how are we going to solve this
problem if you keep stabbing me in the
kidneys and throwing acid in my eyes?

Has never had a partner drive an emotional truck bomb up an important moments of his life...and then watched them detonate it with a smile...just to hurt or humiliate him.

Just to make him suffer.

Just because.

Because to someone in an adult relationship -- whose only experience of such things is a healthy marriage -- the idea that someone with whom you share a life could get so addicted to pure, blind rage and self-loathing that they would put their own well-being at risk -- put the safety of children at risk -- just to see you in pain would be...incomprehensible.

Too bad young Barack Obama never learned the hard lesson that "nice", "accommodating" and "reasonable" absolutely do not work when you find yourself involved with a psycho who wants to punish you for their own failures, set you on fire to silence the voices in their own head, and then piss on your grave to smother the shrieking goblins of their own past.

Because with the Modern Republican Party, that sure as shit is who he's shackled to now.

Irony Back in the ICU Again

OK, which crazy, America-hating Commie said the following?

"Will there be accountability for these self-inflicted disasters? It’s one thing to lose an election over principle. But what principle requires the nomination of the inept and the arrogant?"

Was it Howard Dean?
Howard Beale?
Cindy Sheehan?
Eugene Debs?
Saul Alinsky?
Sacco and/or Vanzetti?
John the Baptist?

No.

It is none other than David Frum -- one of Dubya's favorite Neocon speech-writing stooges -- who recently got himself tossed out of his fascist featherbedding gig at the AEI for not licking the wingnut bullshit pie-plate completely clean and then asking for seconds.

Doubling down on the irony, this was reported in the bouquet of linky-love Andrew Sullivan -- his Happy Rainbow Gumdrop Land Conservatism fellow traveler -- tosses to him every day, and without which Mr. Frum would run the very real risk of having to get an actual job: one that doesn't involve getting paid to spew godawful, idiotic, self-delusional bullshit.

Have a care, Mr. Frum; if the Lord of the Universe ever actually starts handing out "accountability" to the "inept and the arrogant" for "self-inflicted disasters" expect to find yourself spending a billion years scrubbing out toilets in the Malebolge of the Flatterers with naught but Andrew Sullivan's beard for a scouring pad.

Some Of My Midterm Tweets

Because if you can't poach content from yourself...

• O'Donnell concedes. Blames evil twin sister Serena.


• Discretionary spending getting killed tonight. But with re-election of "Pampers" Vitter, indiscretionary spending still obviously IOKIYAR.


• By talking about 1994, Radical Socialist Lester Holt is asserting that history did not begin on 01/20/09. Why does he hate America?


• Party of Chumps & Millionaires doing well. If you voted for them, check your wallet. If there's not a million dollars in it, guess what?


• BREAKING: Fox calls Florida for George Bush.


• BREAKING: Kang and Kodos still too close to call.


• BREAKING: Paladino concedes. Promises to "leave gun" but "take cannoli"...


• If only Democrats had moved to the Center more...


• If only the Democrats had thrown a few more Liberals on the bonfire. If only they had let Mitch McConnell cockpunch them another 10-20 times


• BREAKING: Ed Rendell proposes Zombie Dick Nixon for Obama Chief of Staff. After all, he does know Washington...


• BREAKING: TheAmericanPeople (all 1 word) vote to masturbate with their Right hand for awhile.


• Not Boehner's fault he's bombed. He got tricked into a "take a shot every time a Republican lies about budget arithmetic" drinking game.


• BREAKING: David Broder says President Boehner can save the economy by invading Poland/annexing Sudetenland.


• BREAKING: Paladino concedes. Promises to "leave gun" but "take cannoli"...


• Carl Paladino: Putting the "bat" in "batshit crazy".


• Senate now back to what the Founders intended: An all-white club for old, rich people.


• You call that a concession speech, Sestak? Hell, you didn't even threaten to beat Toomey to a pulp if he didn't meet your demands.


• I guess God did have a Plan for Sharron Angle. And that plan was losing.


• BREAKING: Sharron Angle's concession speech to be given by decoy.


• #PatQuinn Thanks, Illinois! We're getting some drive-thru, then we're doing it twice!

Invisible Hand Wins House of Representatives

"Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut their eyes to plainest facts; and by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute lawgiver..."

-- Thomas Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus", 1833

When you have spent two generations and billions of dollars building a Base of reprogrammable bigots, imbeciles and Christopaths, the full, focused power of pure, relentless, omnidirectional, bald-faced lying is truly breathtaking.

Art For Art's Sake

Republican House Candidate Art Robinson goes all-in with the new GOP "Embracing Your Inner Maniac" strategy.

So who is Art Robinson?

You know your crazy uncle? Not the amusingly eccentric one, but the magnetism-is-a-Commie-lie, I-can-smell-the-moon-people-with-my-mind, full-throttle-with-afterburner-crazy one who is perpetually boiling-piss infuriated about something?

Well apparently that uncle has joined something called the "Tea Party" and, in their wisdom, the good Republicans citizens of Oregon's 4th congressional district have chosen him to fight for their values and beliefs against Democrat Peter DeFazio in the upcoming national election.

The good Republicans citizens of Oregon's 4th congressional district did this in very much the same way -- and obviously using very much the same carefully calibrated set of competence-calipers -- that various other groups of Republican citizens (who these days [for very complicated reasons having to do with assuming that everyone else is as stupid and gullible as they are] often like to play dress-up in pantaloons and funny hats while pretending not to be Republicans) have used to select people like Sharron "Both Right and Obtuse" Angle, Christine "Meatballs But No Happy Ending" O'Donnell, Rand "We The Lying" Paul, Jan "Been Through The Desert With a Corpse With No Name" Brewer, Joe "A Noun, A Verb, and 'Unconstitutional'" Miller and Carl "Paulie Walnuts" Paladino to run for very powerful elected offices in their names.

Which is why, when Crazy Uncle Art went on the teevee last night and spent the better part of 18 minutes alternately yelling at Rachel Maddow, smirking at Rachel Maddow, interrupting Rachel Maddow, insulting Rachel Maddow, patronizing Rachel Maddow and calling Rachel Maddow a liar...as she patiently tried to read Mr. Robinson's own crazy words from his own crazy newsletter back to him and get him to explain his very bizarre ideas and/or confirm or deny that he continued to believe them...I literally could not look away.

It was a singular event, and seen from a safe distance, strangely beautiful, in the same way I would imagine the 1908 Tunguska event might have seemed beautiful if one had seen it from orbit.

As our democracy continues its long, painful, nervous breakdown and slide into McFeudalism, it is, I suppose, sometimes a blessing to have someone as purely rage-blown berserk as Art Robinson pop briefly out of the maelstrom, if only to remind us just how hilariously grotesque the Conservative Soul really looks without its makeup and pearls.

The Democratic Underground has your Art Robinson starter-kit here.

As I have said before , and will no doubt be moved to say again: Modern Conservatism is a disease. If you don't understand that, you're already infected.


Update: Blue Gal kills it here.